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Renewable energy heating installations
Go greener with
Heat Pumps
Right now, our world relies on stealing energy and natural resources that we cannot give back. If you want to continue to be a part of the natural world, you have to act like nature. With heat pumps, you don’t have to burn anything, you don’t have to steel anything - we’re mimicking nature. Even when it’s cold outside, we can take some of that energy and produce something with it.
What do they do?
Heat Pumps extract heat from the air or ground passing that low grade heat through a refrigerant cycle to increase that heat into something useful. This process uses electricity instead of gas or oil. The simplest way to think of a heat pump is a fridge. Imagine your home is a giant fridge that you live inside. However instead of cooling like a fridge the process is reversed and the inside is warmed instead. The compressor and fins (on the back of your fridge) are outside therefore heat is extracted from outside to use inside. A fridge cools inside and warms the room around it with the heat it’s removed. A heat pump does exactly this but backwards. Warms inside the house and cools outside.
How good are they for the enviroment?
It greatly reduces your carbon emissions as the best gas boilers are around 90% efficient. So one unit of gas gets you 0.9 units of heat. Where as a heat pump is between 300 and 400% efficient (some are now heading towards 500%) so for every unit of electric you put in you get between 3 and 4 units of heat out. The carbon savings can be even greater when teamed up with a green energy supplier or your own solar PV or solar thermal system.
Can I have a Heat Pump?
Do you have somewhere to put it?
You need outdoor space preferably not too far from the house to site the outdoor unit.
You also need space somewhere inside to site the hot water cylinder and other system components.
Is Your home well insulated?
The more insulation the better as the more insulation you have the less its going to cost to heat your home! Energy is expensive so slowing heat leaking out helps your pocket and the environment. This applied to gas boilers too but as heat pumps use lower temperatures to heat the home it is important you have done at least the basic upgrades to your insulation, cavity wall insulation, good loft insulation, good quality double glazing and your house must not be too draughty.
Older properties with solid walls are harder to retrofit a heat pump into as the heat losses are higher however it can still be done but even larger radiators and pipework may be required.
Larger properties may need space for multiple heat pumps.
Is it suitable for you as a user?
Important to consider too is you as the user. You need to accept that heating your home with a heat pump is completely different to doing so with a boiler. Don’t worry, you can still be just as warm but heat pumps run most efficiently when running as long as possible at as lower flow temperature as possible so this means allowing the installer to set up the system for optimal efficiency and comfort. You cannot turn a heat pump on and your house be warm in half an hour. Please do not let this put you off, heat pumps are fantastic! But accept from the start heat pumps are not gas boilers!
Install an air source heat pump to:
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Enjoy a warm home that literally pays for itself
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Drastically reduce your carbon footprint
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Play your part in creating a sustainable world
